The Emperor Awakes (56 page)

At that time the same inscription appeared next to the first opening in the tunnel on the seaward side where Giorgos, Vasilis and John were standing.

‘It looks as if we have to do the same at our end. Let me check the scroll.’ Giorgos paused for a couple of minutes while he consulted it. ‘The three keys seem to activate walkways leading to the middle structure. Katerina your wild speculation appears to be right. But that comes later. We need to go through our respective openings first. There may be traps. Take care.’ They all went through their respective openings.

CHAPTER 57

Present day

Katerina, Elli and Aristo recognised the place they were standing in. It was the
Megaron Mousikis
or Music Hall in Athens. They were suddenly all dressed to the nines for a very formal event.

A board on a tripod in front of them told them that Elli Symitzis appeared to be hosting a concert there in aid of the Symitzis Foundation and a host of charities close to her heart. A chance for the elite to show off and hear and relish the multi-layered gossip. Another chance to trash some people, praise others and dish the dirt. And an opportunity to do business.

Security was tight. Nobody unwanted could slip through the net, the spider’s web that Elli had weaved, unless she wanted them to.

When Giorgos, Vasilis and John went through the opening on their side, they seemed to have landed at the same event, themselves dressed formally as well. As they were mingling and enjoying the jovial and glamorous atmosphere, during the interval before the second act, the three of them found themselves drawn towards backstage to see one of the performers whom they admired like star-struck teenage fans, when their eyes fell upon a strange altercation outside one of the dressing rooms. They went closer to investigate.

Giorgos, Vasilis and John could see the intensity of the discussion increasing until it was almost a shouting match, only none of the people standing close to them or passing by, seemed to have noticed or, if they had, did not want to get involved. It was as if they could not see the verbal combatants at all.

As the three of them approached, the couple who were engrossed in their drama, apparently more dramatic than anything taking place only a few metres away on stage, the whole place started to wobble and the floor was changing shapes like jelly and taking them on a rollercoaster ride.

All three of them started to feel dizzy and swaying like a tree accosted by high winds. They were feeling close to losing their balance. The couple was not getting any closer. It was as if they had been walking forever. They began to wonder whether they were going to miss the rest of the performance.

Then suddenly the couple disappeared. Giorgos, Vasilis and John launched into a fierce search. Their eyes caught someone disappearing through a door and they followed. They found themselves in an empty low-ceilinged room with whitewashed walls and no adornment but a simple chandelier hanging from the ceiling. There was nowhere to hide and no other exit from the room. Where did the man go?

As they were about to give up and return to the concert, a man materialised in front of them. Not any man. He was dressed in what Giorgos recognised as Persian attire of the 4
^th
century B.C. The whole room transformed into Persepolis, the Persian Empire’s ceremonial capital and showcase of Persian splendour, that stood for more than two hundred years until it was burned down by the army of Alexander the Great a few months after they captured it in 330 B.C. an act that some people claimed might have even been an accident or the result of a challenge or a misguided act committed in a drunken stupor; others have labelled it a crime against history by the usual perpetrators, the victors.

The Persian led the three men through pillared halls and peaceful gardens to a strange door with indecipherable writing around the whole of its outer edge. The Persian beckoned them through. They were a little apprehensive, but they followed once again, bitten by the bug of curiosity.

When they went through the door, they realised it was a gateway that took them a few years into the future for they found themselves in a ruined Persepolis, only recently raised to the ground by Alexander the Great’s Macedonian troops and stripped to its foundations, its hollowed and ghostly, formerly intimidating, halls of grandeur, now deserted ruins still smoking and telling their sad story through their smoky tears to everybody who would listen.

Giorgos, Vasilis and John felt the shame of being the only people, since the fateful day of its destruction, to see that place freshly desolate. The sands of time and of the desert hid it well until it was rediscovered in the 20
^th
century. The three men wondered what they were doing there when they saw the Persian disappear up a flight of stairs ahead of them.

Up the stairs they went to the great hall and throne room, now not even a burned out shell, but a pile of ashes and random stones. In front of their eyes, though, it seemed to have been restored to its former glory and awe-inspiring magnificence.

They entered a different place, a whole world away from the ashen ruins they left only a few footsteps behind. But then suddenly the illusion was shattered and the hall fell back to its harsh reality of non-existence, its ethereal beauty turning to dust and stripped back to its burned out ashen shell.

They went down a few steps, and through a free-standing doorway connected to nothing, a lone survivor, jutting out like a sore thumb in a flattened-down landscape coming from nowhere and leading to nowhere. They tried to go around it, but the Persian shook his head and insisted that they go through. Although he only spoke once when he greeted them at their first sighting, the few words he had said were strangely in both English and Modern Greek. They wanted to ask why, but held back.

They went through the lone doorway, half-expecting to come out the other side just a step from where they were standing earlier, when they were forced to stop, as if an invisible barrier had been erected in front of them. They tried to go back to where they had come from, but they came up against another barrier.

They were trapped in limbo. They could not move forward and they could not go back. Then they heard a noise accompanied by a tremor appearing to be coming from under their feet and rising ever closer towards them, getting louder and more intense.

A flight of steps appeared and they followed down into darkness that slowly lifted to bathe them in day-light.

They were standing in an underground temple. A mesmerising song echoed around the fresco-heavy walls and the forest of statues and the unsupported roof that did not seem to be attached to anything but floating above them.

The whole place shone with changing colours and images that appeared and disappeared and were reflected around its edges like a news reel or a film, with them the only spectators in a surreal spectacle that seemed to be drawing them in and taking them to different places, places they had never seen before.

A mist rose and fell and a battered stone chest landed at their feet. Something like branches or tentacles or long legs jutted out and speared the ground, securely fastening the chest, and nailing it to the ground, or so it seemed.

Giorgos, Vasilis and John attempted to find a way to open it, but it seemed solid with no visible opening. They tried to lift it, expecting great weight and resistance, and they were almost thrown back when it proved to be as light as a feather.

The Persian seemed to have disappeared altogether. They were flummoxed, defeated by their featherweight gift that miraculously appeared with no warning or an instruction manual. A dark presence was approaching.

Shadowy figures began to gather and multiply exponentially inside the temple. A cold shiver ran down their spines. Then the figures spoke with one voice, the words appearing in the air in front of them.

“You need to see the world with new eyes and then you will be deserving to accept the blessings of the chest. Do not be afraid of what you see. You will know what is an illusion and what is real. Time in your world and the worlds through the other openings has stopped while you are inside.”

* * *

The scene suddenly changed and they were standing in a field in the middle of nowhere. They saw a plane a few feet away. What looked like a pilot stood by the plane and there was a lonely ticket booth on one side of what they now decided was a derelict airfield, while, in all honesty, calling it that would be stretching the definition.

Above the ticket booth was a board with the word “tickets” and below the phrase “plane charter for peanuts”. They began to walk towards the ticket booth, wondering with what money they didn’t have they would pay the fares, when the person behind the counter made a gesture to waive them away towards the plane, but not before handing them a small bag which when they opened saw that it contained a hand. A note inside told them that it was the Emperor’s right hand.

The pilot told them they could board the first flight out of there. They boarded the rickety old plane and with their fingers crossed, their knuckles white from holding on for dear life, and their hearts in their palms, they set off to destination unknown.

Giorgos, Vasilis and John recognised their destination when the plane landed on the street outside the acoustically extraordinary
Megaron Mousikis
or Music Hall, in resplendent-in-leafy-concrete chaotic Athens.

A famous soprano was singing in Bizet’s “Carmen”. They simply could not resist attending. After their evening at the opera was over they ventured out to find refuge and relax at an elegant old café a short bracing walk away in the Kolonaki area of the city.

Sitting at a table, only a short distance away, was the soprano they had just watched, the soprano who carried them into another world, who reached into nerve endings they didn’t know existed, teasing them ruthlessly, playing them like a master, making them vibrate and swell almost to bursting point like a grenade armed and about to explode and spread their innards and splash them onto the canvas around them with deft masterstrokes in a phenomenally wondrous but bloody masterpiece. Job done, sacrifice worth it to the altar of great art.

The soprano had generously and selflessly given them emotions they had never experienced before. Now before them she seemed to have switched to another role, a role expected of someone of her fame, talent and stature, when not on stage but amongst her public, that of behaving every inch la diva prima, la prima donna.

Something did not fit the picture they had created of her in their minds. For her act slipped at an unguarded moment, the layer of legend was peeled away, revealing a girl in all her vulnerability, a deep sadness appearing to be eating away at her. She was, shockingly, alone. Where were the armies and hoards of admirers, barbarian and otherwise, to adulate and worship at her altar and glorious form?

She looked in their direction and beckoned them over. They got up reluctantly, suddenly star-struck shy. Even when she spoke, she sang like a nightingale or a bird of paradise.

‘Vasilis, and Giorgos and … John, is it? Come and sit with me.’

‘How do you know our names?’ Vasilis was curious and a little bit worried.

‘Come. First you sit down. Then I’ll tell you.’

The three men obeyed.

‘Thank you.’ She sang.

‘For what? What could we possibly have given you, my dear lady, that we don’t remember? Our dear friend, amnesia, may have been more tender than usual in her affections.’

‘Even at that distance, I could see that the three of you were mesmerised, hypnotised and ruptured, with eyes for nothing and no-one else on stage or inside that theatre, but for my dear self. I want you all to come with me to my apartment for a drink.’

Vasilis, Giorgos and John could not resist. They were a little bit curious too. They had just met her, but they could not shake the feeling that the chance meeting was orchestrated and that she had a message for them. They accepted her generous invite with alacrity.

‘We would be delighted.’ Vasilis, the unofficial but by silent consent appointed ambassador, spoke for them all.

Inside her apartment in one of the city’s most exclusive blocks, at one of the city’s most exclusive addresses, they sat on her chintz sofa while she excused herself for a moment.

Vasilis, Giorgos and John heard the rustle of silk and turned. Even when walking, she barely touched the ground, her movements sensuous and reminiscent of a cat. A cat about to pounce, perhaps? She came into the room looking every bit the gracious hostess in a temptingly wrapped package, the perfect image of loveliness. She handed Vasilis a small package.

‘This is for you. A small token of appreciation for your admiration. Good manners and Santa Claus will chastise me for not wrapping it, but there was no time.’

Vasilis hesitated, as if afraid of being burned, whether because of the package or touching her he could not be sure. She laughed loudly at his reluctance and misplaced caution.

‘Take it. It won’t bite.’

She said this in a singing a-cappella voice from an invisible sheet to an invisible melody in her head rather than in a flat boring narrative to the non-existent music in their heads which they tried to follow, but could not dare participate in.

Vasilis started to play with the package, flicking it and bouncing it from hand to hand, unsure what to do with it. A crazy idea kept shouting at him inside his brain. This trick was part of her foreplay. He smiled. She smiled too, but from amusement at the confusion of such a usually confident and courageous man.